Complicated

It’s the early 2000s and as I wait for my school bus, I called Faye using our landline “Wala pa si tito bobbit?” –tito bobbit is how we call our school bus driver. I had to call her just to make sure that the school bus hasn’t arrived yet because I am starting to think that maybe, tito Bobbit forgot about me or that I was still sleeping when he came to pick me up, gahh my anxiety. Obviously, wala pa because Faye is still there. Faye gets picked up first, then me, then Bea. The phone call ended immediately because there’s nothing to talk about at just 6:00 in the morning. I called Bea and told her that Faye has not even been picked up yet. She’s relieved because she just finished taking a bath so I told her to get ready “bilisan mo na!”

I turn the radio on and turn it up as Avril Lavigne sang Complicated. “somebody else ‘round everyone else you’re watching your back like you can’t relax, you’re trying to be cool you look like a fool to me”. I don’t really like her, well my best friend Gee and I didn’t like her but I sing along to the song and hear my school bus honk its horn and I ran for the door. My brother Aldous wanted me to eat pandesal with Ligo sardines because he insists it tastes good. Sometimes it tastes good but more often than not, I don’t like it. “Di ka kakain??” sounding a little disappointed, I smiled and said “eh andito na si tito bobbit eh”. In a few seconds, I am out the house, running to the gate. “Hi Tisay!” tito Bobbit greeted, I used to hate him for calling me Tisay but since he started that when I was in 1st grade, I kinda grew to just let him call him that even if he meant the opposite of “tisay”.

I enter the school bus (it wasn’t a bus per se but a big van filled with girls since I go to an all-girls school) and sit on my usual spot in the morning trip. Everyone is quiet inside the bus, most of my friends are trying to still catch some sleep before school happens and some are just staring blankly somewhere. I sat there, look out the window and kept singing Complicated in my head. I reached for Cool Air gum in my pocket and ate two of it. Usually I would save the other piece for a different time.

I can’t wait to reach school and tell my best friend how I like Complicated and loathe Sk8er Boi like it’s the most important thing to say. I started thinking about how my day would pan out, I can’t wait for lunch time because we’d go play at the school’s Playground! No one usually goes there at lunch time so I like it. I am already planning the course we’d take for my made up Global Guts and Legends of the Hidden Temple and smile at the thought that of course, Gee and I would win again today. We always aim to be the Champs especially since I stopped being a scaredy cat for the high monkey bars and bridge we’d cross.

–

I remember how I felt that day, I remember how easy everything was and the only thing complicated was Avril Lavigne’s Complicated.